Tyddyn Teg's LEAP Business Plan

SUMMARY
Tyddyn Teg is a workers’ co-op operating a 31 acre land-holding in north-west Wales as an agro-ecological vegetable farm and community supported agriculture scheme (CSA). The purpose of this document is to outline a program of investment by which we believe the operation will be able to more than double its current turnover through increasing the volume and efficiency of vegetable production and by developing its farm shop and wholesale vegetable business.

1. Farm Overview
Tyddyn Teg is a market garden managed as a workers’ co-op with  9  current  members. It is

situated on  Tyddyn  Berth;  a  31-acre  smallholding  on  south-facing  land  sloping  gently  down

towards the River Seiont at an elevation of approximately 100m above sea level. The average

annual rainfall is 810mm and the soil is a fertile silt loam on free draining subsoil, well suited

to growing a wide variety of vegetables. Infrastructure such as field drains, French drains and

ditches are in good order, and we have a borehole to irrigate tunnels and field crops capable of

delivering 2.5m3/hour of water.

The farm has 4 acres of outdoor cropping space and ¼ acre of polytunnels plus an additional 150m2 propagation  tunnel,  where  all  our  transplants  are  raised. There is  a  250m2  barn  for

equipment and maintenance containing an insulated vegetable store waiting for a refrigeration

system to be fitted. The farm has 2 working tractors, a good range of attachments, a mini digger,

machine shop and fabrication equipment, and a broad range of power tools and hand tools for

general building  and  horticultural  work  (See  Annex  A  for  a  full  list  of  current  equipment).

Currently Tyddyn Teg has about 6 Full Time Equivalent staff, plus 4 part time trainees.

Most of  our  vegetables  are  sold  via  a  Community  Supported  Agriculture  Scheme,  whereby

customers buy a monthly subscription and collect a set list of vegetables from our on-site farm

shop. In return for their commitment they receive a substantial discount against the retail value

of the  vegetables. Those not  wishing  to  commit  to  the  scheme  are  able  to  use  the  shop  to

purchase as  many  or  as  few  vegetables  as  they  like  at  standard  retail  prices. Both scheme

members and drop-in customers are also able to but a range of 'extras' made up of both Tyddyn

Teg produce  and  goods  purchased  for  resale  from  our  local  network  and  Organic  North

Wholesalers. In addition, we operate a small wholesale vegetable business selling our produce

to several local shops and restaurants. Being a local food hub and strengthening our local food

network, as  well  as  being  a  community  resource  in  both  a  material  and  a  social  sense  are

important elements of our mission.

Ecological sustainability is another core value for us, and it is our ambition to be at the forefront

of the  sustainable  food  movement,  proving  that  food  production  need  not  cost  the  Earth. To

that end we are constantly developing and refining our horticultural practice, with a range of

processes and techniques around maximising productivity per unit area and labour efficiency,

whilst conserving or even improving our soil through minimising cultivation, cover cropping,

and mulching. Pests and diseases are well managed through an agroecological approach to land

management as well as a broad range of crop-specific interventions and a long and diverse crop

rotation.

i. Horticultural Systems
Tyddyn Teg follows a zoned growing strategy, with land being managed at different levels of

intensity in different areas. These areas are:

a. The Nursery

b. The Polytunnels

c. The Home Field

d. The Field Blocks

a. The Nursery
The Nursery is a 150m2 polytunnel where all of our plugs and plants are raised from seed, crops such

as onions  and  squashes  are  cured  and  seeds  are  processed  and  saved  from  some  Open  Pollinated

Varieties (OPVs). We are in the process of increasing our seed saving skills and capacity through the

Gaia Foundation funded seed saving program in cooperation with The RealSeeds Company, with a

view to becoming a commercial supplier of seeds in addition to participating in the Welsh Seed Hub.

Since this venture is very much in its infancy, we have not included it in financial models yet.

The Nursery is equipped with its own water supply and wash sink. There are  currently 3 x 5.8 m2

thermostatically regulated heated benches with electric heating wires, 2 in sand and one in cement.

Each bench has a removable horticultural fleece cover to maintain temperatures at night and when

external temperatures are low. The use of 3 benches allows for a range of germination temperatures.

There is  a  total  of  31.5  m2  of  ambient  benching,  plus  outside  space  for  hardening  off. Seeds are

propagated in  Moorland  Gold  seeding  compost  or  Moorland  Gold  potting  compost,  that  is  sieved

prior to use. All seeds are sown by hand.

Our germination success rate is fairly consistently high at around 90-95% excepting a few varieties

we are  trying  (e.g.  Baruka  Pak  Choi  and  Cavalo  Nero  kale  where  we  suspect  the  seed  is  of  lower

quality). We would generally expect to get 80-90% usable plugs from a tray and then 70-80% usable

plants (for heading varieties) from a sowing in early Spring. Quality of plugs tends to degenerate as

the season progresses and temperatures rise, dropping as low as 50% usable plugs in some cases by

Summer due to high temperatures making it difficult to control moisture levels. Surplus in rounds is

outsourced to  our  wholesale  customers  or  the  drop-in  shop. We cautiously  experiment  with  new

varieties every year, looking for the perfect combination of taste, reliability and storability.



b. The Polytunnels
We have  one  small  (6  x  25m)  polytunnel  and  two  larger,  double-span  (14  x  33m  and  16  x  33m)

polytunnels currently  in  production. Following a  Farming  Connect  funded  consultation  with  Jake

Eldridge of Oxton Organics we have recently transitioned our polytunnels to a bio-intensive no-dig

approach with  permanent  beds  1m  wide  built  from  6  inches  of  municipal  green  waste  compost  or

well-rotted wood chip compost. These beds are topped up once per year in an alternation of materials

(woodchip compost/municipal  green  waste  compost). We receive woodchip for free from the local

foresters and age it for a year before use, turning it a few times with our digger. Municipal

green waste compost comes at £9/ tonne delivered. Our total  bed  area  is  about  700  m2  at  the

moment and will go up to 788 m2 when we reskin our empty tunnel (see Horticultural Development

Plan, section 2.ii).

Due to this transition our weeding burden has gone down significantly and most crops only require

irregular hoeing and hand-weeding to keep the system clean. Edges are controlled using 1m wide

mypex borders.

Additional fertility management comes in the form of regular application of comfrey tea to fruiting

crops and we also make use of aerated compost teas both as a foliar spray to protect against and curb

diseases and as a root soak to promote soil health and nutrient cycling.

We use a combination of nursery raised plugs/ pots and direct drilling of seeds to raise crops. We

have both overhead sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation systems. Our Solanaceae block are always

done on  drip-lines  as  are  our  cucumbers  and  our  spring-autumn  lettuces  (which  are  usually

interplanted through the Solanaceae and cucumbers).

We are  able  to  manage  a  3-year  rotation  with  the  space  we  have  and  the  block  sizes  we  use.

Occasionally we fit in a speedy green manure of buckwheat but in general we don't really have time

between crops. Sometimes we  are  also  able  to  rot  in  crop  residues  under  mypex  covers  –  in  situ

composting giving another layer of organic matter to the beds – but this is also time dependent.

Our tunnels  are  not  yet  at  full  production  capacity  and  production  could  be  increased  by  more

interplanting and  catch  cropping  as  well  as  tighter  turn-around  times. We currently  manage  a

minimum of 2 and a maximum of 6 plantings through the year in the tunnels, depending on the crops.

c. The Home Field
The Home  Field  is  where  we  grow  the  crops  which  require  the  most  intensive  management  and

harvesting (e.g. runner beans, courgettes, spinach, beet leaf) and crops which either don’t fit into our

rotation blocks,  or  have  timings  which  make  them  inappropriate  for  those  blocks  (e.g.  garlic  and

broad beans). On a yield/ m2 basis, we are getting good returns for our crops on this area, either on

par or above target yields (See Appendix C for 2019 crop yield figures). Our problem is that when

Tyddyn Teg took over the land this area had a huge weed burden – both annual (especially annual

meadow grass and Galinsoga parviflora) and perennial (mainly couch grass and some docks). This

has meant that we spend an inordinate amount of time weeding, and hand weeding becomes necessary

as in our climate it is often not dry enough to control the relentless wave of Galinsoga through hoeing.

After a consultancy in 2019 with Jake Eldridge from Oxton Organics and Johannes Storch of Bio-

Gemusehof Dickendorf,  we  have  been  experimenting  with  biointensive  no-dig  over  the  last  year,

based on applying a heavy layer (approx. 4 inches) of municipal waste compost over a small section

of this field (272m2 – labelled ‘No-Dig’ on map 1) to be skimmed with around 1/2”-1” compost after

each year, to see how our crops would grow using this method. We were able to eliminate all perennial

weeds in this area by hand, given its small size. We found that most crops responded well to growing

in such a deep layer of compost – and critically from our perspective cut  down weeding to almost

zero. The No-Dig system has also allowed us to have tighter succession of crops, as we didn’t need a

period of stale seed bedding before the next crop, reaching 4 crops per year on some beds.

d. The Field Blocks
Since taking on the farm, we have expanded the outdoor cropping area by about 40%, and we now have approximately 3 acres of land under management in the field blocks, divided into 7 rotational

blocks of  50m  x  33m.2   Following  a  Farming  Connect  funded  consultation  with  Iain  Tolhurst  of

Tolhust Organic,  we  are  moving  towards  a  7-year  rotation  model,  with  2  years  in  Nitrogen-fixing

green manure leys and 5 years in crops in this order: Potatoes, Brassicas, Alliums, Roots then Squash.

The 5 of 7 rotational blocks that are intended for production have steadily been brought into condition

as our  skill  and  capacity  have  developed,  and  are  not  yet  in  full  use  (i.e.  we  have  the  capacity  to

expand our growing a little within the area we currently manage). In 2020 (this year) we will have

used about 1.5 acres of an available 2.15, and will be using the full 2.15 acres for the first time in

2021 (next year).

The Field Blocks are managed by a combination of mechanised, tractor-drawn intervention (e.g.flail-

mowing, spring-tining and inter-row cultivation) and hand tools (e.g. wheel-hoes). We always strive

to minimise hand-weeding operations as much as possible. In addition, we are seeking to cut down

our manure  applications,  as  soil-testing  has  revealed  a  build-up  of  Zinc  in  some  of  our  fields  (see

Annex C), which, prior to our taking on the farm received approximately 50 tonnes/manure/acre/year.

We are  also  minimising mould-board  ploughing  operations  as  much  as  possible,  instead  aiming  to

establish over-wintering  cover-crops  wherever  possible  and  then  prepare  land  by  flail-mowing,

followed by  shallow  rotavating  to  undercut  and  combine  green-manure  stubble,  chisel-ploughing

planting rows where necessary, and then planting. We believe that this system will better support soil

structure and biology whilst maintaining yields and minimising release of soil Carbon, and so far this

seems to be the case.

ii. Marketing Systems
Tyddyn Teg operates an on-site self-service shop as well as a wholesale delivery service for shops

and caterers.

The shop  retail  area  is  19m2  with  an  adjoining  ambient  store  and  packing  room  of  13m2,  where

produce is packed for shop and catering customers, prior to delivery or collection.

We have a 4-tiered marketing system:

1. Veg scheme customers paying a monthly tariff (£40 or £60) and receiving a guaranteed right

to a  full  range  of  produce  in  a  pack-your-own  veg  set-up  in  our  on-site  self-service  shop.

Scheme members receive a 10-50% discount on produce depending on the season (higher in

summer). This is our flagship business, generating the largest and most stable proportion of

our income, and the discount against the price of retail veg is important in order to make the

scheme attractive to customers. Veg scheme customers also purchase a significant quantity

of 'extras' drawn from Tyddyn Teg's own veg as well as fruit and condiments from local and

global suppliers.

2. Drop-in customers paying full retail price for vegetables available in our on-site self-service

shop. No guarantee  of  full  range  or  produce,  no  obligation  to  buy. This is  the  most

unpredictable market we have but also the highest unit cost we can receive for our veg.

3. Wholesale customers  in  the  catering  business  (currently  dormant,  usually  active  June-

December) – we send out a list of available veg for the week in hand to these customers and

they receive  a  25%  discount  against  our  retail  prices  with  a  minimum  order  of  £25,  free

deliveries on  orders  over  £100  and  otherwise  a  £1  per  mile  delivery  fee. We have  a  few

regulars as well as catering for sporadic events during the season.

4. Wholesale customers in the retail business (shops) – we send out a list of available veg a week

in advance (fewer lines than the  caterers who effectively mop up excess  end-of-round veg

whereas we deliberately over-produce a few really successful lines for the shops), and do a

free delivery round on Wednesdays. This is the largest and most stable/ predictable part of

our wholesale veg business as we have built good relationships with our shop customers over

several years. They receive a 33% discount against the retail price of our veg with a pledge

not to under-cut our shop prices for anything we sell them.

As of July 2020, Tyddyn Teg has 150 Veg Scheme Customers (100 Basic and 50 Bumper), with plans

to expand to 180 by July 2021 (we are already taking deposits from interested parties). The average

drop-in and extras turnover in our shop was approximately £872 per week from April-July 2020, but

dropped to £625 in August 2020. For the past 2 years, we have consistently had  a long waiting list for the veg scheme,  and without

doing any  marketing  have  already  received  190  enquiries  from  January  to  May  2020. Customer

retention on the scheme is high (less than 5 % ‘churn’ per month in 2020), and the farm also enjoys a

favourable geographic position (See Annex B) – thus there is reason to believe that we are in a strong

position to expand.

Our total turnover in veg and shop sales from January-December 2019 was £82,648 (see Figure 6

for a breakdown).

Based on  past  form,  from  July-December  we  are  almost  100%  self-sufficient  in  terms  of  veg

production for our scheme. From January-June we buy in root vegetables and a few other items to

keep the scheme diverse, ensure staple items are available as well as meeting discount targets (always

at least 10% off against retail prices). In addition, we buy a small range of fruit, veg and condiments

that we do not produce ourselves for resale to our customers, focussing mainly on UK products with

a few seasonal exceptions (European seasonal fruit and early season veg, and a few exotic products

e.g. bananas and ginger).

Our main supplier for all of these things is Organic North, a Manchester based wholesale company

who have a large and reliable supply base and deliver direct to the farm. The mark-up we put on

these items is generally 1.8 for perishable items and 1.5 for non-perishables.

We also sell some produce from local suppliers (farms and small-holdings), including eggs, honey,

fruit and a few vegetables (covering seasonal gaps in our own production). The mark-up we put on

these is generally 1.3-1.5, allowing for a larger proportion of the profit to go to the producer and

supporting local economies.

Our total  spending  on  goods  for  resale  in  2019  was  £17,966,  the  vast  majority  of  which  was  with

Organic North (£15488), whereas our local supply network accounted for £2466.

14

iii. Organisational Structure
Tyddyn Teg Cyf was constituted as a company limited by guarantee in 2015, as a workers cooperative

and in May 2020 converted to a Cooperative Society, with registration No. 4707 using Coops UK’s

model rules  for  a  workers  cooperative. It is  anticipated  that  changes  to  the  rules  will  be  made  to

enable a community share issue, with non-user shareholder representation on the board. Subject to

establishing an appropriate mechanism for worker members to accrue an equity interest in the coop

as part  of  the  compensation  package,  the  rules  change  will  also  see  a  change  from  collective

ownership to common ownership.

There are three tiers of responsibility to enable a non-hierachial management structure:

Board of Directors
All worker members of the cooperative are members of the board of directors.

The roles and responsibilities of the board are:

• To develop a policy based governance structure for the organisation. These are our secondary

rules, providing  the  guiding  policies  for  management  of  the  business  as  well  as  matters

relating to living on the farm. The policies are subject to annual review and can be amended

at any time, subject ro consensus.

• Provide direction for the business, through an ongoing business planning process.

• Fulfil the  fiduciary  duty  of  protecting  the  assets  of  the  cooperative  and  the  interests  of

investors.

• Fulfil the monitor and control function. This involves agreeing targets for the business and

monitoring actual performance.

• Recruitment of members.

The board  meets  monthly  with  the  secretary  being  responsible  for  the  calendar  of  meetings,

preparation of the agenda and maintaining minutes of meetings.

Management Committee
All workers are on the management committee. Tyddyn Teg has a horizontal management structure,

meaning that  all  members  are  managers,  with  the  committee  meetings  being  the  point  for  regular

coordination of  the  cooperative,  covering  both  business  and  live-work  matters. The committee  is

governed by the resolutions of the Board of Directors and is responsible for the implementation of

policy. Minuted meetings are held, generally following Directors meetings. In addition, there are ad

hoc meetings to deal with routine issues relating to the week’s activities held on a Monday morning.

Working Groups
Most roles  and  responsibilities  are  coordinated  through  working  groups. Each working  group  is

responsible to the management committee, operating within agreed terms of reference (see template

in Appendix E).

For example,  the  Growing  Team  (comprising  5  members)  take  responsibility  for  organising  all

horticultural production activities, agreeing targets and managing volunteers on the farm. Within the

Growing Team, responsibility is divided between the Nursery Manager, the Polytunnel Manager, the

Home Field  Manager  and  2  Field  Block  Managers,  all  of  whom  are  responsible  for  planning  and

managing their own crops within the overall production plan.

The Retail Team (comprising 3 members) take responsibility for organising management of the shop,

communication with wholesale customers, taking and delivering orders etc. Responsibility is divided

between the Shop Manager, the Wholesale Manager and the Deliveries Manager. There are multiple

other teams  including  Building, Admin,  Machinery  etc.  Membership  of  the  teams  is  self-selecting

and can  be  over-lapping  (i.e.  most  members  are  part  of  at  least  2  teams). Roles are  agreed  by

consensus every year, ensuring that all key responsibilities are either delegated to specific people or

else put on a rota.

The working  groups  approach  was  adopted  in  early  2020  and  we  are  still  developing  the  working

practices and will be looking to learn from the sociocracy community to develop the most effective

ways of bringing decision making down to the lowest level, while retaining accountability, enabling

groups to be responsible for their own budgets, to achieve agreed targets and objectives.

Outlook

It is  our  intention  to  be  an  organisation  that  is  governed  by  strong  process  rather  than  strong

personalities. This supports the stability of the co-op, by ensuring that members can leave without

serious disruption and new members can join with an equal say in how the business is run. We have

been steadily  gaining  members  from  a  starting  team  of  4  to  the  current  cohort  of  9  members  and

expect to enrol 2 new members this autumn (some members have also left). We believe that this way

of sharing power and responsibility within the organisation and having fluid membership could be

key to the future of farming, allowing new entrants access to land without purchase and allowing old

farmers to retire without selling their businesses to land developers.

We invest in training our people in consensus decision making and communication skills and hold

periodic all co-op training and visioning events supported by outside consultants.

2. Business Development Strategy Overview
Our primary goal is to increase revenue by significantly increasing the number of members on our

CSA scheme  from  the  current  membership  of  150  to  240  or  thereabouts. This will  involve  a

significant but, we believe, entirely achievable improvement in consistent marketable yield across a

range of the crops that we produce, whilst in a few cases we are already close to the level of production

necessary to  sustain  240  members,  thus  we  will  simply  be  making  better  use  of  what  we  already

produce.

We do  not  expect  to  achieve  this  expansion  all  at  once. Developing and  refining  the  systems,

procedures, skills  and  working  culture  that  will  enable  us  to  do  this  sustainably  will  need  to  be  a

gradual and  iterative  process,  aiming  to  increase  Veg  Scheme  Membership  by  approximately  30

customers per year. Every year we will review our situation with existing co-op members and make

a decision about the target for the next year – hence the plan may be subject to some adjustment as

we grow into our expanded system.

We would also like to improve and diversify our farm-shop to sell a greater range of local and seasonal

organic produce:  thus  strengthening  our  local  food  network,  enhancing  our  customers'  access  to

affordable high-quality food and increasing footfall through our shop and hence vegetable sales.

a. Scheme numbers:
We envisage increasing our scheme membership by 30 a year over 3 years, reaching a total of 240

by July 2023. The split between Basic and Bumper members is currently approximately 2:1 and we

will assume this ratio continues. We tend to see a drop in membership of around 20% over the

winter months. We will assume that this trend continues.

We intend to marginally increase the monthly cost of the scheme to £42.50 for the Basic and £64 for

the Bumper to cover the 'extra weeks' in the year (when there are more than 4 collection days in a

month), effective as of January 2021. This increase is reflected in our projections.  When we have

reached our target of 240 members, we expect the membership to flatline for some time while we

focus on improving our wholesale business and the efficiency of our operation.

Our calculations suggest that we should be able to grow the veg scheme income by approximately

£15,800 per year to a total of around £120,000 by the end of 2023.

Deliveries
Part of this expansion will be managed through a box delivery service. During the Covid-19 crisis

we have been piloting this service, packing and delivering around 20 boxes per week for customers

unable to  come  to  our  shop  for  various  reasons  and  charging  £10  per  month  for  the  service. This

currently requires around 5 hours of labour per week and 65 miles of driving (paid at £0.50 per mile

as we have outsourced to a friend with a van) at a total cost to the co-op of £62.50 per week (so costs

are almost, but not completely covered by the surcharge).

We believe that we can enhance the efficiency of this element of our business in the future by signing

up more delivery customers within the geographic areas we are already going to, potentially using

‘hubs’ in some areas to deliver multiple boxes to one place at once and eliminate going door to door,

and improving our packing area and hence speed (it currently takes us about 1 hour and 20 minutes

to pack 20 boxes). When we have taken all of these measures, we will make an adjustment to the

delivery fee in order to ensure that 100% of the costs are covered.

In terms of packaging, we will take deposits on the crates we use (repurposed from our wholesale veg

purchases) and assign 2 to each customer (1 in use, 1 to return), thus we do not anticipate additional

costs on packaging.

As a rough estimate we believe that we could pack and deliver as many as 50 boxes per week by 2023,

and have modelled an increase in labour of 1 hour per week every year to account for expansion (we

anticipate that most of this will be in packing time as we will try to streamline deliveries as explained

above). The delivery service will increase uptake on the scheme  as well  as lifting pressure on the

shop, drive and car-park and decreasing carbon emissions. Taking this and our long waiting list into

account, we  should  have  no  trouble  filling  our  scheme  as  well  will  be  able  to  access  hitherto  un-

tapped markets  such  as  graduate  and  post-graduate  students  based  in  Bangor  and  people  without

access to personal transport in all major population hubs within 10 miles.